[HN Gopher] How good are American roads?
___________________________________________________________________
How good are American roads?
Author : chmaynard
Score : 147 points
Date : 2024-11-20 14:45 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.construction-physics.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.construction-physics.com)
| digitalsushi wrote:
| I heard a civil engineer make a claim once that the dust on the
| side of the road is about 300% more laden with precious metals
| like platinum, than random mining. I suppose this is all roads
| and not just American roads, though.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| Isn't it supposed to be mostly brake pads, rotors, and tire
| rubber?
|
| Would be fascinating to imagine it being economically viable to
| vacuum up and reprocess it, but based on the above I've assumed
| it was worthless.
| alt227 wrote:
| Sounds a bit like the guys that collect the sludge from the
| sewers in jewellery and gold smithing districts in cities,
| then pan it for gold. Its not going to make anyone rich, but
| theres enough gold dust in there to buy some food and shoes
| for somebody hungry enough to dive into a sewer and collect
| sludge!
| mikepurvis wrote:
| Supermarkets that make you put in a quarter to take a
| shopping cart are really just paying the homeless $0.25
| each to return them from the parking lot.
| technothrasher wrote:
| It seems more like the customers are paying the homeless,
| and the supermarkets are just acting as brokers.
| permo-w wrote:
| it's the same for bottle deposits in parts of Europe.
| anything in a plastic bottle costs an extra ~10c which
| you can retrieve by depositing the empty in a machine at
| the supermarket
| permo-w wrote:
| in the UK, trolley deposits are much more expensive, at
| PS1. people are more likely to retrieve a PS1 than a
| quarter, but the atomic payout is ~5x higher, so I wonder
| which scenario yields better pay for the homeless
| mikepurvis wrote:
| I mean ultimately the goal is to find a balance where
| carts won't be everywhere and customers aren't
| inconvenienced to the point of choosing a different
| store.
| permo-w wrote:
| I mean either way carts aren't gonna be everywhere, and I
| don't think pounds have ever been a problem for shoppers
| in the UK
| genter wrote:
| Dust from the catalytic converter. I've heard of gangs in LA
| taking shopvacs to the shoulder of the freeway at night.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Doing a public service, there.
| buildsjets wrote:
| Pics or it didn't happen. I'll even accept AI slop if its
| well crafted.
| ASUfool wrote:
| Quick attempt:
|
| https://ibb.co/DYVtXz2
| alt227 wrote:
| Pretty good, have an upvote.
| buildsjets wrote:
| Ay, look at my homies get it done!
| potato3732842 wrote:
| Doesn't pass sanity check. They would run street sweepers
| if anything.
|
| And surface roads with stop and go would have a higher
| density of particles in the "go" places (like beyond
| lights).
|
| But if the gangs can make money doing it why wouldn't the
| municipalities do it?
| olyjohn wrote:
| Yes, it's copper and other metals used in the brake pads, as
| well as tire dust. Rotors are mostly just cast iron, so I'm
| not sure how bad that is.
| gothroach wrote:
| Cody's Lab did a video with some experiments collecting and
| refining road dust. As I recall, he did manage to obtain a
| small bead of platinum-group metals but it didn't appear to be
| economically viable at least at a small scale.
| xyst wrote:
| > The US has the largest road network in the world, about 4.3
| million miles of road, and Americans drive much more than
| residents in most other countries
|
| This is insane. This just proves how entrenched this country is
| in car centric transportation. We spend trillions in building,
| subsidizing, and maintaining this infrastructure. Only for this
| cycle to repeat itself in 25 years as the roads/highways
| breakdown and people move further out (induced demand). Then
| there's the billions in lost productivity due to traffic.
| Significant decrease in activity and increase in obesity.
|
| Then the increased emissions from vehicles result in poor air
| quality. Then there is decreasing water and food quality as tire
| and brake particles make its way into the water and food
| supplies.
| O5vYtytb wrote:
| You're right that car centric transportation is entrenched, but
| this is the wrong statistic to prove that point. The US is a
| huge country and the overall density of roads (km/100km2) is
| lower than Europe.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_road_netw...
| trgn wrote:
| man is measure of all things. its density of people is lower
| too.
| arethuza wrote:
| Europe isn't a country though - difficult to do a comparison
| as a about 40% of Europe is the European part of Russia which
| has a much lower road density than the US, mind you European
| Russia is going to be the part that has the _highest_ road
| density of that country.
| kube-system wrote:
| And almost 20% of the US is a former part of eastern Russia
| with _really_ low density. :)
| arethuza wrote:
| I wonder if it would make sense to base the comparison on
| road network density in areas that are above some
| threshold for population density?
|
| i.e. Try and measure how many roads there are in areas
| where most people actually live?
| kube-system wrote:
| Only if you're trying to intentionally cherry pick the
| data. Population density inherently affects road
| networks, and that will be reflected in the data.
| bluGill wrote:
| You should compare EU to the US before you comment on roads.
| The US is much larger than any EU country and so of course we
| will have a lot more roads.
| hammock wrote:
| Couldn't driving more be a sign of a strong and productive
| economy? Other large countries like Russia or Australia or
| something that drive less have smaller GFP as well.
|
| Can we make a better comparison of how much Americans drive,
| plus total travel, vs total travel for other countries of
| similar density and size?
| PittleyDunkin wrote:
| I imagine you'd have to weigh this against alternative forms
| of transit. The freight rail industry is the largest in the
| world and directly represents (presumably productive)
| economic activity. Personal transit makes up a much larger
| percentage of road usage, even in metro areas with healthy
| public transit. It's hard not to see this as some form of
| inefficiency.
| swatcoder wrote:
| For your critique, you'd want to break out urban+suburban road
| networks from regional and rural ones. The US was a frontier
| country that grew on top of continent-spanning trails with
| pockets of community cropping up everywhere there were
| agricultural, material, or strategic resources, or the need for
| a travel rest. It's to be expected that we have many miles of
| road and mostly a good thing that our communities are so well-
| connected and traversable.
|
| It's what happens _inside_ those communities, when they could
| be designed with better concern for local community or
| sustainability, that warrants the critique. And it 's a good
| and fair critique. Just not one directly spoken to by the
| quoted statistic.
| MiguelVieira wrote:
| The National Forest Service alone maintains 265,000 miles of
| roads.
|
| https://www.fs.usda.gov/science-technology/infrastructure/ro...
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _This just proves how entrenched this country is in car
| centric transportation_
|
| How? We're big, rich and sparsely populated. I'm not saying
| that means we must have this system. But the longest road
| network doesn't prove that's wrong.
| XorNot wrote:
| This is called an "Argument from Incredulity" and it's a
| fallacy. Pointing to a large number without any basis of
| comparison does not make any statement about whether it is too
| large or too small. You also have billions of cells in your
| body! Is that too many?
| jameshart wrote:
| This is a great analysis but it does focus exclusively on
| 'roughness', which is obviously important but isn't the be-all-
| end-all of road quality.
|
| One area I notice in particular that roads in the northeast US
| subjectively _feel_ worse than Europe is in quality of road
| markings. Constant plow scraping and harsh salting seems to
| destroy markings.
|
| I think it also shows up in the overall fit and finish of road
| infrastructure - edging and barriers, signage, lighting,
| maintenance of medians, how curbs and furniture contribute to
| junction legibility... and of course bridges.
|
| One major reason is that European countries typically have
| national road agencies and consistent standards across the
| country (because, generally, smaller and less federal). US's
| patchwork of federal, state and local road maintenance leads to
| vastly different budgets and department priorities across the
| network.
| eqvinox wrote:
| I generally agree but need to point out Germany is organised
| like the US regarding road construction. Only Autobahnen and
| Bundesstrassen are under federal authority, with states and
| municipalities divvying up the rest.
| gattilorenz wrote:
| Same in Italy (and probably most other EU countries); there's
| (about 25.000km of) roads that are maintained by a state
| agency; others are managed by a region, a province or a city.
| There's also an entirely different agency that needs to take
| care of highways.
| tialaramex wrote:
| Yeah the UK is pretty similar. Devolution means Scotland
| and to a lesser extent Northern Ireland have some autonomy,
| but the big important roads are controlled by national
| government (albeit not necessarily the UK government) and
| your residential street is handled by much more local
| government, in my case the city where I live.
|
| Actually Scotland bizarrely happens to have a road most
| similar to what most US folks would consider normal - a
| motorway (a multi-lane highway) named M8 going straight
| into the centre of a large city (Glasgow) on concrete
| stilts. This is not how the rest of the UK does it, but it
| so happens the M8 was conceived in that window of time
| where it was considered a good idea, some parts of my city
| were made in that era and I'm glad I don't live in them.
| ajmurmann wrote:
| But the regulations in Germany are largely federal, no?
| eqvinox wrote:
| They might be (no idea), but if they are there's a
| significant amount of leeway allowed and visible between
| municipal roads in Bavaria and Brandenburg (richer vs.
| poorer states...)
|
| Edit: no, at least part of them is state specific, e.g.
| Saxony road administration law: https://www.revosax.sachsen
| .de/vorschrift/4785-Saechsisches-...
| ajmurmann wrote:
| Oh interesting! I'm honestly surprised because roads
| always seemed so much more consistent to me in Germany.
|
| Also, "Bepflanzung des Strassenkorpers" might be the most
| German thing I've read in ages ;)
| HdS84 wrote:
| Just FYI, at least germanies rods are also a patchwork. E.g.
| there are the Autobahns, which are financed by the federal
| state. Than there are Bundesstrassen (Yellow markings,
| typically something like B56) which are also financed by the
| federal state.
|
| Then there are Landstrassen, which are financed by the
| Bundesland (state, LXXX). Followed by Kreisstrassen, financed
| by the Gemeinde (county?`).
|
| Finally there are Gemeindestrassen, financed by the city or
| town.
|
| There are lots of norms and regulations on how to build these
| roads, so there is not that much variance except layout. E.g. a
| bike friendly city like Munster has a dfiferent layout than say
| Cologne.
| ajmurmann wrote:
| I think your last paragraph is the key one. AFAIK in the US a
| lot less is regulated on a federal level. Like in Oregon
| you'll rarely see reflectors on the lane markings whereas
| they are omnipresent in some other states.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| What are these lane markings you speak of? I must tell our
| local street department, they will be amazed to hear of it.
| woobar wrote:
| Probably Cat's Eye
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat%27s_eye_(road)
| ajmurmann wrote:
| Yes. There also is a version that's set into a groove so
| that snow plows don't scrape them off.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| It was meant to be a sarcastic comment. My town's lane
| markings are so bad they might as well not exist in most
| places. And when they do repaint them they seem to use
| the thinnest flat paint they can buy, at night in the
| rain they just disappear. I know heavy reflective lane
| marking paint exists because I've seen it elsewhere.
| brewdad wrote:
| Oh man, you want to see what a difference lane markings
| make? Take a drive on a rainy night to Grants Pass Oregon
| from Crescent City CA on hwy 199. In CA the lanes light
| up like a Christmas tree. The moment you cross into OR
| the lane lines basically disappear and you are mostly
| driving blind hoping the oncoming traffic doesn't stray
| across a center line neither of you can see.
|
| It's remarkable that a state where the rainiest months of
| the year coincide with some of longest winter nights in
| the lower 48 states uses such horrible road paints.
| ninalanyon wrote:
| The lack of reflectivity of lane markings in North Carolina
| made night driving in the rain on the multi-lane roads
| around Raleigh quite a demanding task.
| mannykannot wrote:
| While I agree on your additional criteria, I feel the roughness
| metric itself (at least as explained here) is not as
| informative as it could be: a generally smooth road surface
| with sudden discontinuities in level (e.g.potholes) seems
| qualitatively worse (and damaging) than would be a smoothly-
| varying one with the same roughness. Perhaps an alternative
| metric might be based on the maximum speed at which a typical
| car or truck could travel without experiencing vertical
| accelerations above a certain threshold? ('typical', here would
| be with regard to things like its mass, suspension travel and
| stiffness, and wheelbase.)
| wubrr wrote:
| The metric might already account for the scenario you bring
| up, since a road with potholes will be more 'rough' than a
| smoothly varying one based on my understanding of this
| metric.
| mannykannot wrote:
| I thought about that, but this is what I had in mind: take
| a section (say 100 M) of an undulating road, smooth it out,
| then put a ridge across it that restores its roughness to
| its initial value. My feeling is that the latter would be
| more of a problem (this opinion is colored by the fact
| that, in my neighborhood, road repair is creating bumps and
| ridges like this.)
| wubrr wrote:
| I guess it would depend on how big the ridge you add
| would have to be. I'm not at all an expert on this, but
| my thinking is that a ridge of size 2X would have an
| exponential effect on the travel of the suspension and
| resulting IRI value when compared to a ridge of size X.
| So a perfectly smooth road with a ridge of height 2X
| would have a higher IRI than the same road with 2 ridges
| of size X.
|
| The wikipedia article has more details on how the
| measurements are done (there are multiple different
| ways/instruments used which can have different results) -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_roughness_ind
| ex
|
| > The IRI is based on the concept of a 'golden car' whose
| suspension properties are known. The IRI is calculated by
| simulating the response of this 'golden car' to the road
| profile. In the simulation, the simulated vehicle speed
| is 80 km/h (49.7 mi/h). The properties of the 'golden
| car' were selected in earlier research[12] to provide
| high correlation with the ride response of a wide range
| of automobiles that might be instrumented to measure a
| slope statistic (m/km).
| js2 wrote:
| The reflectivity of the road markings in North Carolina--where
| plows are rarely used--is terrible, to the point that they are
| almost invisible on a rainy night, even on freshly painted
| roads. It's the worst of anywhere I've lived or driven in the
| U.S.
|
| Relatedly, recently my wife mentioned seeing a vehicle with
| large boxes on each side and wondering what they were. From her
| description, I tracked down that they are a fleet maintained by
| a small company that measures road marking reflectivity:
|
| https://www.beckenterprises.com/services/
|
| So who knows, maybe NC is finally doing something about the
| road markings here.
| tdeck wrote:
| What an interesting niche business! I love that the Software
| section of their homepage appears to be a screenshot of
| WordPress template source code.
| withinboredom wrote:
| That's a stock image when you search for "code" available
| on almost any stock image provider.
| tdeck wrote:
| I figured something like that it's just a little bit
| funny.
| sumtechguy wrote:
| In NC it really depends on where you live. With some of them
| looking very nice. While others it looks like it has not been
| touched in 20 years. I personally think they just have a set
| timeframe to refresh things and they stick rigidly to that no
| matter how good or bad they are.
| js2 wrote:
| I've driven NC from the mountains to the sea and haven't
| seen good reflective markings anywhere. Certainly all the
| road markings in and around Wake county are awful. Even at
| their best the markings don't compare to say Florida roads.
|
| I think part of the problem is that NC counties don't
| maintain their own roads:
|
| "North Carolina has the second largest state maintained
| highway network in the United States because all roads in
| North Carolina are maintained by either municipalities or
| the state."
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Carolina_Highway_System
|
| I think NCDOT just doesn't use reflective paint. Maybe it's
| more expensive. I see folks complain about it frequently.
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/asheville/comments/18ro7lx/why_doe
| s...
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/raleigh/comments/12ehtj6/rain_and_
| r...
|
| A video of 3M reflective paint that is designed to work in
| both wet and dry conditions (skip to 6:40):
|
| https://youtu.be/4iY8JqHN-kI?t=400
|
| A related issue you may have noticed is the large amount of
| trash on our roadsides. This is again because roadside
| trash pickup is maintained by the state and the budget for
| roadside cleanup has been de/underfunded since 2008.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| Interesting, they're not that far from me. I love these
| little niche industries that no one's heard of. I guess they
| have to travel a lot to get enough business though.
| nkrisc wrote:
| Ah, very cool, and great timing. I saw one the other day and
| was wondering what it was measuring (I assumed).
| CoopaTroopa wrote:
| You have a good point. I live in Michigan and recently traveled
| down to Austin, Texas. The roads didn't seem all that much
| better but all of the road markings really stuck out to me.
| Reflectors in all the lines separating lanes, soft bollards
| surrounding cross walks and parking areas, extra curbs built in
| for bike lanes. It makes things look a lot nicer but my first
| thought was, "could you imagine trying to plow around those
| bollards, or those reflectors would get ripped up on the first
| pass."
| 1659447091 wrote:
| Austin didn't even have snow plows until 2022, the year after
| snowmageddon. If I remember correctly, they tried using road
| graders and sand. Even then, it's generally ice, not snow in
| central tx, even after removing snow in 2021 there
| isn't/wasn't much to do about all the ice.
| cglace wrote:
| To me, snowmageddon will always be Atlanta 2014.
| Etheryte wrote:
| Northern Europe gets more than enough snow and bollards and
| reflectors are a thing all the same. It's not a problem if
| you plan for it ahead of time and design and build things
| with that in mind.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| For what it's worth I hate the roads and parking in Europe.
| Roads are narrow, intersections are chaotic and parking is a
| joke. I drove around Europe for around 3 months (France, Spain,
| Italy, Germany, Belgium etc.) and longed to drive back in the
| US again.
| DrBrock wrote:
| This feels like it's supposed to sound like a bad thing. I
| think it's awesome the cities you went to were designed for
| the people who actually live in those cities, not the people
| driving through.
| switch007 wrote:
| Yeah in Europe you want to head for the main train stations
| or Park and Rides if you're spending time in cities. They
| usually have large car parks and good public transport.
|
| Outside of towns and cities the road networks in those
| countries are generally excellent. Especially in France and
| Italy with their toll roads.
|
| If you're just going city to city, take the train.
|
| I've driven extensively in Spain and to a lesser extent
| France, Italy and Germany and never found parking a "joke"
| except in cities or with a huge car. Of course, due to
| density, the free parking places are usually very busy and
| hectic. But there's always an option to pay/pay more
| the_mitsuhiko wrote:
| Probably comes down to what you are used to. I find driving
| in the US stressful mostly because of other drivers not
| behaving like I'm used to.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| I bet the proportion of unpaved roads would look a lot less bad
| if it was done by lane-miles rather than road-miles.
| kube-system wrote:
| Of course, nearly all roads with >2 lanes in the US are paved.
| But that doesn't tell us anything other than the fact that we
| have the money to pave roads that are frequently traveled.
| O5vYtytb wrote:
| Amazing that Minneapolis tops the city road quality chart,
| despite having the harshest winters. Do southern cities not build
| their roads so robustly? Or are they not maintained?
| bluGill wrote:
| I'm guessing not maintained. Minneapolis is forced to spend a
| lot more on roads just to keep things acceptable. They also
| have a lot of voters with a memory of how bad things get after
| a bad winter and so politicians don't dare short road funding
| let they be voted out over a few potholes. (I've seen roads in
| Minneapolis that were more pothole than surface)
| gorfian_robot wrote:
| the south is generally a poor region with terrible public sand
| social services
| O5vYtytb wrote:
| 3 of the bottom 4 cities are in California.
| dmoy wrote:
| I mean, yea? CA has the highest real poverty rate (SPM) in
| the whole country.
|
| Some of that won't translate as well to road quality due to
| the fixed cost portion of road repair (because the OPM rate
| isn't the highest (though still quite high)), but some of
| it will due to the not fixed cost portion (labor, etc).
|
| But it definitely affects prioritization. People won't care
| as much about road quality relative to other things.
| firesteelrain wrote:
| This does not make a great argument for California. It
| appears as a failed state compared to others.
| cactacea wrote:
| > Do southern cities not build their roads so robustly? Or are
| they not maintained?
|
| Yes
| edwhitesell wrote:
| Maintenence. I grew up in the north (Michigan) and spent time
| in Massachusetts, living in Texas now it's very different how
| infrastructure is funded. I'd call it a result of the general
| politics, no one wants to spend money on infrastructure.
|
| I believe the latest stat I heard was that over 70% of the
| roads & alleys in the city where I live are >40 years old. That
| also means all of the infrastructure under the roads (water,
| conduits, etc.) are also >40 years old.
| firesteelrain wrote:
| Not all Southern states.
|
| Florida is an outlier in road quality both anecdotally and from
| this page - almost equal in quality to blue states of New
| Hampshire and Maine. Non-interstate Florida roads drop to 74%,
| lower than Alabama (which has less interstate roadways than
| Florida) but higher than all other Southern states and most
| Northern states.
|
| 1. https://www.cbsnews.com/miami/news/florida-ranks-among-
| top-5....
| quickthrowman wrote:
| There's a joke in Minnesota about having only two seasons,
| winter and road construction. As soon as the ground thaws, road
| construction starts up all over Minnesota.
|
| St Paul is right next door to Mpls and has absolutely terrible
| roads, but they're improving. St Paul has full road replacement
| on a 120 year schedule because they got drunk on TIF over the
| past few decades and don't have the money for to schedule full
| road replacements every 60 years.
|
| St Paul does enough road maintenance and pothole filling that
| it owns an asphalt batch plant:
| https://www.stpaul.gov/departments/public-works/street-maint...
| bluGill wrote:
| My grandpa used to work for the MN highway department. That
| isn't a joke, it was reality for them. Either the plows are
| on the truck and they are plowing snow, or the plows are not
| on and they are fixing roads.
|
| Roads are a tiny % of any government budget. St Paul could
| have the money to do more if they wanted, and it wouldn't be
| much of a total budget increase. However it would still
| increase taxes and so people should debate if it is worth the
| cost.
| xenospn wrote:
| When I was driving in Minneapolis a few years ago, you couldn't
| drive more than 20 miles an hour because the roads were so bad
| around the neighborhood. I wonder if they fixed that.
| brewdad wrote:
| I think Minneapolis has a citywide 20 mph speed limit for
| non-arterial roads. They might consider the rough road a
| feature.
| throaway204 wrote:
| Winnipeg has notoriously bad roads throughout the city, and the
| harsh winters are always the excuse. But Minneapolis and Fargo
| don't seem to have these problems!
| Spivak wrote:
| This explains why there's such a huge and consistent split in how
| good/crumbling US infrastructure is! It's "lives in a top-10
| metro area / doesn't." It's been living rent-free in my head why
| opinions on this are so unbelievably stark. Turns out you can
| both be right.
| VyseofArcadia wrote:
| How does Hawaii have interstates?
| ThinkingGuy wrote:
| https://www.straightdope.com/21341858/how-can-there-be-inter...
| cratermoon wrote:
| Just one. H1 <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_H-1>
| DCH3416 wrote:
| More than one. H-1, H-2, H-3, and then looks like a spur of
| some kind H-201.
| kube-system wrote:
| Because "interstate" doesn't refer to the function of the
| particular road, it refers to the federal program that created
| them: the "Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate
| and Defense Highways".
|
| There are a _ton_ of interstate highways which do not go
| between states, even in the continental US, and especially the
| auxiliary (i.e. 3-digit) interstate highways:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_auxiliary_Interstate_H...
|
| The US already previously had (and still has), a national road
| system that traversed across states other than the Eisenhower
| system. But nobody calls these roads "interstate" because
| they're not in the Eisenhower system:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Numbered_Highway...
|
| "Interstate" has always specifically referred to Eisenhower
| system roads only.
| kunwon1 wrote:
| I watched this YT video [1] about the interstate system
| recently, I found it informative and entertaining
|
| To me, the Eisenhower Tunnel in CO [2] is noteworthy. It
| crosses the continental divide at altitude. From what I've
| read and watched, they don't allow HAZMAT trucks to go
| through, because the risk is simply too high (well equipped
| fire/rescue departments are hours away, among other factors)
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SR7BA3xEmDo
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eisenhower_Tunnel?useskin=v
| ect...
| kube-system wrote:
| As I understand, HAZMAT is very commonly banned in a lot of
| tunnels, and some jurisdictions ban it in all tunnels.
| czinck wrote:
| There's an interstate that runs entirely within one county, in
| Maryland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_97
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Not just that, but how is the overall quality of roads in
| Hawaii so bad?
|
| It is not a poor state.
| kube-system wrote:
| > Interestingly, I expected cold places to have lower road
| quality in general due to things like freeze-thaw cycles and the
| impact of road salting, but there doesn't seem to be much
| correlation. Plenty of cold places (North Dakota, Wyoming,
| Minnesota) have good-quality roads
|
| Not sure about those states in particular, but I have anecdotally
| noticed that some of the places with the harshest winters do some
| of the least road salting -- because salt is mostly usable for
| light to moderate snowfall and the people who live in the
| harshest climates are often better equipped to drive on hard
| packed snow.
| hanniabu wrote:
| Also depends on where you're looking. Cities will have worse
| roads because they're always digging working on gas and water
| lines, some of which leak. That disturbance of the ground will
| make things a lot worse than some rural road where the ground
| hasn't been disturbed since it was created.
| softfalcon wrote:
| This is the truth. They're digging out under a massive
| overpass in my area right now to fix water main and gas
| piping issues as we speak.
|
| Road is all torn up and patched up. It has been a boondoggle
| of construction cones and heavy machinery for months now.
| bluGill wrote:
| The new suburb I live in they put all that beside the road
| not under it. That is what the space between the road and
| sidewalk is for.
| brewdad wrote:
| This works well in suburbs with modern setback rules. It
| doesn't work so well in established urban areas where
| buildings often go right up to the sidewalk which goes
| right up to the road.
| bluGill wrote:
| It doesn't work well here either. It frees up the roads a
| little, but as someone who bikes on those "shared use"
| sidewalks there are regularly "yellow vest people"
| blocking the sidewalks.
| softfalcon wrote:
| This is somewhat true where I'm at in Canada. In the city, half
| the people have proper winter tires, the other half "wing it"
| with whatever they can afford/put-up-with.
|
| Regularly see accidents all winter long from goofs sliding
| straight across multiple lanes of traffic or going off into the
| ditch. Only some of us are prepared.
|
| We don't salt, only drop sand grit and gravel sparingly. Our
| roads become ice rinks or snow piles for a decent portion of
| the winter.
|
| Your comment about us being "better equipped" made me chuckle
| as I spent this morning watching my neighbours play slip-and-
| slide in the cul-de-sac cause they opted to not put their
| winter tires on.
|
| As someone who grew up in the mountains, their behaviour is
| downright dangerous in my opinion.
| kube-system wrote:
| > opted to not put their winter tires on.
|
| Heh. At least they have them, and/or know what they are. I
| have been met with "they make tires just for snow?" when
| talking about snow tires in the US before.
| softfalcon wrote:
| Hah! Yup! Heard that one before from Californians, Texans,
| New Yorkers, and Arizonans in my travels.
|
| Ignorance can be the death of ya! Thank goodness most of
| them aren't trying to drive up here!
| eep_social wrote:
| CA, TX, AZ yeah, yeah, yeah but hang on.. New Yorkers!? I
| hope these are the ones who live in NYC without a car..
| otherwise that's completely insane. Upstate NY gets tons
| of snow. Buffalo famously so.
| ElevenLathe wrote:
| I've lived in Michigan most of my life and only people in
| the remotest places have snow tires. City folk just use
| the same all-weather radials all year round and maybe
| keep some chains in the trunk for emergencies.
| olyjohn wrote:
| Honestly, tire tech has come a long way even in the last
| 10 years. Some current 3 peak rated all seasons can
| outperform some of yesterdays best snow tires.
| buildsjets wrote:
| Nobody lives upstate, relatively speaking. New York
| State's population is 19.5M. 8M live within NYC limits.
| Another 8m live on Long Island and 2M in the counties
| just west of NYC. So around 1.5M for all the upstate
| areas combined compared to 18M in the metro area.
| kemotep wrote:
| I think you are double counting Queens and Brooklyn in
| that estimate of Long Island because between the Metro
| areas of just Buffalo and Rochester is over 2 million
| people not counting places like Syracuse and Albany.
|
| Yes, New York like most States is full of dozens and
| dozens of counties with less than 10,000 people but they
| add up and while the city proper of Buffalo is like
| 1/10th a single Borough in population, it too has suburbs
| and exurbs. Even the area around Fort Drum is just over
| 100k people.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| The average driver today knows shockingly little about
| their car. It's an appliance. They put gas in it, take it
| to the dealer for service when the message comes up
| saying service is due, and that's about it. Checking tire
| pressures, tread wear, brake wear, oil and other fluid
| levels, or opening the hood for any reason is not
| something they ever think about.
|
| They make their payments and trade when the warranty
| expires. It's an appliance.
| dgfitz wrote:
| That's amusing to me. My spouse and I fix all our
| appliances, cars included.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| The sentiment resonates with me. I'm the only person
| under 50 I know that changes their own oil, let alone
| performs other routine maintenance like air filters and
| break pads.
| dgfitz wrote:
| I think you and I had a disagreement the other day. It's
| nice to see we also agree on things.
| daedrdev wrote:
| To be fair I feel like this requires being a homeowner so
| that you have a garage to work in
| dgfitz wrote:
| I don't have a garage.
| brewdad wrote:
| Do you own a home? Every apartment I've ever lived in
| prohibited doing any car maintainance on the property.
| dgfitz wrote:
| Yes, and my unique qualification for owning a 1100 sqft
| home was "no HOA"
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| No garage. I have a driveway, but do most of my auto work
| in the street because I don't want stains on it
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| When I rented a room, I did my auto maintenance on the
| curb. Now that I have a home, I still do that because I
| don't want oil stains on my driveway.
|
| I get that some people don't have space for an oil pan,
| but tons do. Brake pad replacement doesn't require
| anything besides the jack from your car and a socket
| wrench.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Many localities have co-op community workshops where you
| can use their space to work on your car. They may even
| have a lift, common tools you can use, and someone there
| who might know enough about car repair to help you. Or
| not, but check into it.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| There is also old-fashioned community. Most people know a
| friend or family member with a driveway.
| vel0city wrote:
| Yeah that there, that's getting to be incredibly
| uncommon.
|
| And it's not hard to see why.
|
| I had a GE washing machine start misbehaving one day. It
| would fill the tub, do a few spins to try and balance the
| load, start to spin up for a few minutes, stop. Try and
| balance the load, spin for a few minutes, stop. Then
| eventually just give up, without even draining the tub
| before unlocking the door.
|
| Me knowing appliances pretty well, I already had the
| knowledge the service manual is probably tucked away
| inside the shell. Strike one going against most normal
| people, they wouldn't know to do that. Open that up, see
| how to get into the diagnostic menu and translate the
| error codes and run some tests.
|
| Ok, so now I know it's a speed sensing issue. The speed
| the motor is reporting and the speed the tub speed sensor
| isn't making sense for the fixed gear ratio so it thinks
| there's something unsafe going on. That's a decent safety
| issue, but looking at the tub as it spins it's probably
| just a sensor issue.
|
| The tub hall effect sensor was like $20 shipped from the
| GE parts website. Quick and easy to swap out. No dice,
| still not wanting to spin up. More reading online, it's
| likely the main motor inverter board. Well, that's pretty
| deep in the machine, could also be the motor assembly
| itself which would be covered under warranty, let me call
| a GE service guy to come.
|
| Service guy comes, he plugs some wireless adapter into a
| hidden USB port, fumbles with it for a few minutes with
| an iPad with a shattered screen, gives up diagnosing the
| issue. Writes up an invoice proposal for $900 worth of
| parts and labor for him to swap out a ton of things, or a
| referral code/discount coupon for me to buy a new unit.
|
| I decline the order. Surely not all this shit is wrong
| with the thing. I find the inverter board online from a
| third party site for <$100, was available from the
| official parts site for not much more. Start unplugging
| it a bunch, and notice the motor hall sensor pin wasn't
| seated very well. I don't want to put it all together
| again just to find reseating/gluing the connection
| together didn't solve the problem, so I just put the new
| inverter board in. Put it all back together and it's just
| fine for <$100.
|
| I imagine it was just a loose connection for that sensor.
| This is probably still a perfectly functional board on my
| shelf. I'll keep it and the other sensor in case some
| other issues happens in the future. But it could have
| been just a loose connection that sent this nearly $1000
| unit to the scrapyard if it wasn't for me bothering to
| look. It could have been an exceptionally cheap part. And
| the final fix I accepted was just somewhat cheap part.
|
| In the end people generally don't care to actually fix
| shit, and I imagine the majority of people would have
| just thrown up their hands before looking for the service
| manual, called the tech, he would have made it obvious a
| new unit would be a better deal, and they would have
| taken it.
| dgfitz wrote:
| I did something similar for a dryer. Even identified the
| part that failed.
|
| I bought the part-number equivalent part and the prongs
| didn't fit in the slot. I spent 45 minutes carefully
| filing down/snipping the prongs to fit the enclosure.
| Been 5? years without an issue.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Did you get the part on Amazon? I've had really bad luck
| with third party parts from Amazon. I always pay a bit
| more for OE or OEM parts now.
| dgfitz wrote:
| I don't remember. Probably.
| vel0city wrote:
| I generally try to avoid Amazon as much as I can these
| days. Unless I know some supplier only really sells
| through Amazon I try and buy directly or use another
| retailer. Far too hard to tell if I'm buying something
| legit or not.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Once upon a time (more than 5 years ago), I bought a
| small Bluetooth USB on Amazon that also required some
| manual work before I was able to stick it into a normal
| USB port... it was very slightly more massive and careful
| filing took care of it.
|
| One would expect that there is nothing more standard than
| USB-A. Nope. There is an exception for every rule.
| keybored wrote:
| > In the end people generally don't care to actually fix
| shit, and I imagine the majority of people would have
| just thrown up their hands before looking for the service
| manual, called the tech, he would have made it obvious a
| new unit would be a better deal, and they would have
| taken it.
|
| Is that the conclusion to this whole story?
| vel0city wrote:
| Sure, pretty much. A hired tech didn't bother
| understanding the deeper issue would prefer me to use his
| coupon code to buy a new unit of great cost to me.
| Chances are a simple reseating of a connector and
| additional support would have prevented several hundred
| pounds of otherwise perfectly fine materials going to a
| landfill and cost me almost $1,000 for a similar
| replacement unit.
|
| And if I didn't have enough knowledge and determination
| past a standard consumer it would have been trash. Sadly
| most consumers and support techs don't care enough.
| XorNot wrote:
| The difficult of dismantling some of these things to fix
| things is a significant issue though - you have to have
| the time and interest in a lot of cases, and at the end
| of the investment might still have a non-functional item.
|
| i.e. if I spend 3 days figuring out my washing machine,
| I'm trading leisure time (bought at whatever my salary
| rate is) for the cost of the machine. If the machine is a
| nightmare to open up and close, then I don't really blame
| people for just buying a new one.
|
| A bunch of this can obviously be mitigated: right-to-
| repair is a good start, but we also need incentives for
| serviceability - the example you give of being able to
| actually get diagnostic data is one area (IMO: that
| should just be legally mandated as open-source, make it a
| national security policy - which it is IMO). Firmware
| blobs for chips should also be public - i.e. I've got a
| few things where the microcontroller is dead, I can
| source a replacement, but there's no way to get a copy of
| the onboard programming.
|
| And then obviously, if we could somehow encourage design
| which means components are easy to remove, that would be
| great (i.e. logic and control boards should _always_ be
| mounted accessibly).
| keybored wrote:
| Some people are just built different.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| >yeah but hang on.. New Yorkers!
|
| New England too. At best only a minority of people use
| snow tires here.
|
| Which should beg the question if these things are as
| magical as the internet cheerleaders say they are then
| why doesn't everyone in these sorts of states have them.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| Winter tires are one of those things that are very poorly
| marketed for some reason. Magical? No, but very, very
| good. I drive a RWD car through Minnesota winters and I
| was completely blown away by the difference the first
| time I got a set of winter tires. That said, you really
| only notice the difference if the roads haven't been
| plowed yet.
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| Because if you believe you can get by without them, why
| shell out the money? And you generally _can_ get by
| without them if you live relatively close to an urban
| area.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| It would be weird if someone in upstate NY hadn't heard
| of snow tires, but it's not insane to not use them. I
| spent most of my life in Wisconsin (obviously a place
| with lots of snow and ice), and frankly snow tires just
| aren't necessary in most winter driving scenarios. All
| seasons will do you just fine 95% of the time, and for
| the other 5% you should consider chains instead of snow
| tires anyways. Or of course don't go out, which is the
| actual best option most of the time. Almost nobody back
| home has snow tires because they just aren't worth it.
| wbl wrote:
| Californians? I'd be curious to know what parts of the
| state they are driving in because I cannot imagine living
| in CA with a car and not going to the pretty places.
| brewdad wrote:
| I'd imagine most Californians are using chains or other
| traction devices rather than snow tires. Snow tires would
| be awful in the Bay Area or pretty much any of the
| state's main cities.
| Maultasche wrote:
| As a Californian living in the central valley, where we
| never get snow, I had never heard of snow tires until I
| lived in Germany, where seemingly everyone had them in
| winter. Nobody around here has them or even sells them.
|
| When we go up into the mountains in winter, either the
| roads are cleared and we can drive on them with normal
| tires, or it's snowing heavily and we put snow chains on
| the tires and drive slowly. I've only had to use snow
| chains a couple times in my life because I generally only
| go into the mountains when it's not currently snowing,
| which is most of the time.
|
| Climate change has made the climate drier here, the
| mountains get a lot less snow than they used to. It also
| helps that real winter with snow storms only lasts about
| 3 months.
| brewdad wrote:
| Not sure when snow tires became more mainstream but I
| started driving in Michigan in the late 80s and didn't know
| a single family that used snow tires. Where I live now snow
| tires only make sense for those who live in or visit the
| mountains regularly. The valleys are mostly at or above
| temps where snow tires wear quickly or become less
| effective on wet surfaces.
| grecy wrote:
| In (most?all?) of BC winter tires are required by law, and
| salting the roads is illegal due to the horrific damage the
| run off does to the environment.
| DCH3416 wrote:
| You mean to tell me dumping literal truck loads of salt
| into the water table is a bad thing? Why does everything
| that works well have terrible consequences.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| It also tends to corrode any sort of metal in the
| structures that it's on, which also contributes to poor
| road quality from the article. And it corrodes the cars
| traveling on it as well.
| brewdad wrote:
| Does BC allow chains instead of winter tires? Oregon does
| for cars and light trucks. WA seems to be more of a free
| for all but also tends to completely shut down their passes
| more often than Oregon does.
| tonyarkles wrote:
| > goofs
|
| Can confirm, definitely Canadian!
|
| We just had a massive first snow dump in Regina here. 15-20cm
| in 24h. It's treacherous out there, I was in 4HI all morning
| trying to get around.
| bongodongobob wrote:
| I've lived in WI 40+ years and winter tires are a waste of
| money. Unless you're in the mountains somewhere or going off-
| road, they're just an extra thing to buy.
| bluGill wrote:
| Very much so - WI and other northern states know how to
| clear their roads. While you will need to slow down a
| little more while it is snowing it doesn't really matter
| because someone else will not have winter tires and so
| force you to slow down to that speed even if you have them.
| And even if you have them they are better than summer
| tires, but they are not that much better, you still need to
| slow down on ice.
|
| Winter tires are very important in places where they get
| bad weather but don't clear the roads. Those are not
| generally places people live though.
| AngryData wrote:
| Ehh, I almost never use winter tires but I still disagree.
| Some people are simply not good or attentive enough drivers
| for me to believe they will be fine without winter tires.
| yxhuvud wrote:
| Wait, Canada don't have regulations about having winter tires
| of some kind? Wow, that is odd.
| kube-system wrote:
| Canada is a federal state like the US, and it similarly
| delegates much of the power to regulate driving to the
| provinces.
| rikthevik wrote:
| British Columbia mandates winter tires on highways going
| through the mountains, and chains for trucks. I wish other
| provinces would put in similar mandates, because it's a bit
| of a clown show on the roads right now in Saskatchewan.
| jcadam wrote:
| Winter tires are not cheap. I'm in Alaska and recently paid
| $1400 for a new set of studded winter tires for my F-150. And
| the tires I chose were one of the lower cost options
| available.
|
| So I totally understand why folks who can barely afford to
| put gas in their car are driving around on all-seasons year
| round (and ending up in the ditch frequently).
| pbmonster wrote:
| > $1400 for a new set of studded winter tires for my F-150
|
| The F-150 and maybe the studs play the biggest role here. I
| kept it below $400 for my small hatchback, even though I
| went for Conti (but it was before COVID).
| bell-cot wrote:
| > ... because salt is mostly usable for light to moderate
| snowfall and ...
|
| Perhaps more important - salt's effectiveness fades as the
| temperature decreases. Sand and gravel do not have that
| problem. So if you're running the Road Dept. in an area where
| serious cold ain't some rare event - why would you bother with
| salt?
|
| EDIT: I know the "melt to pavement, solar heating finishes the
| job" tactic. Which can work with heavier snowfall, if you
| plow/shovel before salting. Colder weather inhibits both halves
| of the melt-&-heat. (Plus the further north you are, the
| shorter & slantier the sun's rays get, even on clear days.)
| DCH3416 wrote:
| Because the goal is to get the road surface exposed so it'll
| heat up and melt off the snow during the day. And then the
| residual salt will leave a residue which will help prevent
| refreezing.
| kube-system wrote:
| That only works in places with relatively milder winter
| climates. In harsher climates, salt stops melting snow, and
| the surface temperature of even exposed road may stay below
| freezing even during the day.
| DCH3416 wrote:
| Yeah. I'm familiar with the harsher climates aspect.
|
| The salt isn't really for the snow, it's for ice.
| Temperatures above like 10F, the sun will still cut
| through an untreated road surface and glaze over. Even
| with snow, because the top layer will still freeze, that
| nice _crunch_ you get. The hazard is you have a smooth
| surface that your tires can 't grip onto well when the
| sun goes down. I know it sounds counter intuitive but
| snow will still melt on very cold days because without
| wind you get a localized heating effect from the sun.
|
| The nice thing is, ice gets increasingly grippy the
| further down you go. It's the around freezing temps that
| get you. And bridges since rather than the ground holding
| temperatures, now you've got an air conditioning going on
| under the road. That's why salt is so useful over say
| grit because it changes the freezing point of the water.
| DCH3416 wrote:
| > Not sure about those states in particular, but I have
| anecdotally noticed that some of the places with the harshest
| winters do some of the least road salting
|
| Salt isn't effective when it gets really cold so it tends to be
| applied more around freezing as opposed to below. It also
| depends on the road surface temperature as well, heat of the
| sun melts off snow and that freezes at night. So you'll find
| salt has to be applied intelligently to the conditions, on
| bridges for example, which I suppose would come from
| experience.
|
| I also observe southern states seem to use more rubber instead
| of rock in their road surface. So that might be a factor on how
| robust they are to wear.
| bluGill wrote:
| 0F is defined as the temperature that salt on ice reaches.
| Regular salt is used a lot in Minnesota because it works fine
| most of the time and is cheap. It doesn't work on the coldest
| days, so about 15F they start adding in salts other than
| NaCl. Below -15F they no longer have a salt that works at all
| - but those days are rare.
|
| My Grandpa worked for the MN highway department until around
| 1995 when he retied, so my information is a bit out of date,
| but chemistry doesn't change that much so I doubt it is very
| different today.
| alwayslikethis wrote:
| The more obvious reason is that colder places do not get as
| many freeze-thaw cycles. It simply stays frozen for a few
| months. In contrast, much of the northeast experiences many
| more freeze-thaw cycles since even in the winter it is warm
| enough to thaw the ice on some days.
| bluGill wrote:
| Cold places see a lot of freeze-thaw cycles in fall and
| spring - before and after the hard freeze. I don't know how
| they compare, but it isn't clear cut.
| wkjagt wrote:
| I've often heard the cold climate given as the reason for the
| terrible roads in Quebec, but you clearly notice the roads
| getting better as you cross the border out of Quebec into
| Ontario for example.
| lifeisgood99 wrote:
| The Quebec road industry has historically been corrupt.
|
| https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/quebec-roadwork-
| indu... and many many other reports.
| rpcope1 wrote:
| > Colorado near the absolute bottom for road quality
|
| > Kansas and Wyoming have much better road quality
|
| Absolutely zero surprise there. It's amazing the moment you cross
| the Kansas-Colorado border on I-70, for example, how the
| interstate goes from very good to immediately extremely bad.
| panzagl wrote:
| Ahhhh Colorado, blue state tastes with a red state budget.
| dmix wrote:
| Kansas and Wyoming are red states?
| ducttapecrown wrote:
| They are red states, but without the blue state tastes that
| might pull the state budget in other directions. (I don't
| know anything about the budgets of the states of Colorado
| or Kansas or Wyoming).
| dirtyhippiefree wrote:
| The color map from the election confirms.
| glitchc wrote:
| A good comparison point would be Germany. It has a very large
| network of roads too, some designed for very high speeds, and a
| strong driving culture (perhaps stronger than the continental
| US).
| kunwon1 wrote:
| I'm an American, I lived in Germany for several years around
| the turn of the century. German roads that I encountered were
| far superior to American roads. Their construction is far more
| robust, the roads last much longer. And with German lane
| discipline (passing someone on the right is practically a
| cultural taboo, it's a prohibition that's taken quite
| seriously) they are usually a joy to drive on.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| I found the autobahn utterly nerve-wracking to drive on.
|
| In the US, on an interstate, the MPH spread around the speed
| limit is probably -20 to +20 (i.e. limit is 75, slowest cars
| are at 55, fastest at 95)
|
| In Germany, on autobahns, you have speed ratios of up to 2x.
| You have to constantly be 110% aware of every vehicle within
| 1/4 mile of you, because you could either be closing in the
| much slower vehicle in front of you, or suddenly approached
| and passed by a much faster vehicle from behind.
| cr1895 wrote:
| >You have to constantly be 110% aware of every vehicle
| within 1/4 mile of you,
|
| Not such a terrible thing honestly...
|
| Personally, I find the lack of predictability on US
| interstates is much riskier. I'm pretty sure the accident
| statistics back this up too.
| jcadam wrote:
| Absolutely. I was stationed in Germany for 3 years while I
| was in the Army. You could be in the left lane of the
| Autobahn, doing 90+ passing a truck, and suddenly a Ferrari
| that wasn't there 5 seconds ago is right behind you,
| flashing its headlights demanding you get out of the way
| (apparently you're supposed to merge into the side of a
| semi).
| f1refly wrote:
| It's also a legal taboo, fyi
| cr1895 wrote:
| >And with German lane discipline
|
| The number of big trucks hanging out in the left lane in the
| US drives me mad...
| MisterTea wrote:
| Depends on the state. Many like NY have "No trucks in left
| lane" laws.
| grecy wrote:
| I just drove across ten US states and five Canadian provinces
| from the West to East Coast, shipped my Jeep to Europe by way of
| Iceland, then drove 100 miles through Denmark, Germany and
| Switzerland.
|
| Driving on the freeways in those mainland European countries was
| immensely relaxing and easy - the road quality is vastly, vastly
| better than the US or Canada. Expansion gaps, cracks and
| imperfections are almost imperceptible.
|
| Anecdotal, of course.
|
| I have a strong memory of Driving I-40 from Cali into Arizona and
| not being able to maintain 60mph because the potholes were so big
| I though I was going to break the suspension on my Jeep.
| vinay427 wrote:
| I think anecdotal evidence may be a reasonable proxy for those
| countries, although at least in stereotype and anecdotally they
| are very far from representative of (even) western Europe. I've
| noticed quite a bit of variance between major highways and
| smaller highways or other roads across Italy, for example.
| irrational wrote:
| I'm surprised AZ is at 82%. I've driven all over the country and
| the very worst highway I've ever experienced, by far, is the
| drive from Las Vegas to Flagstaff.
| vesrah wrote:
| Yeah, the 93 between Kingman and Nevada is absolutely terrible.
| Last time I was through there (9 months ago) they were doing a
| small bit of paving but it wasn't in one of the rougher areas.
| smilekzs wrote:
| The SFBay I-880 and US-101 are always packed, often under
| construction, but still pothole-filled, with sections of extreme
| roughness. Compare this to our OR neighbors, where there are
| signs saying "your tax dollars at work" by ORDOT everywhere. I
| used to scoff at this as a display of insecurity, but apparently
| (from TFA at least), Oregonians' tax dollars _are_ at work.
|
| CA takes so many tax dollars from my hands. Why aren't they "at
| work"?
| mhuffman wrote:
| They are "at work" ... for other people's versions of "at
| work".
| xvedejas wrote:
| I'd like to see California consider reducing the total mileage
| of roads and focus on having a smaller amount of higher quality
| paved surfaces. My neighborhood street does not need to be 60ft
| wide, and our freeways do not need more lanes.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Oregon manages about 40% the road miles of California with
| 10% the population and 70% of the tax revenue per capita.
| brewdad wrote:
| Start with the fire department. They are the ones demanding
| 60 ft wide residential streets so that their trucks can turn
| around without having to drive a few blocks out of the way.
| mikysco wrote:
| Oregon is 60% the size of California by land area but only 10%
| of the population.
|
| Roads like 101 & 880 can't be worked on during the day because
| of massive congestion issues. But drive up & down 101 after 9
| or 10pm (even on weekends), and you'll see crews hard at work.
| Hats off to those crews working the night shift.
| throwup238 wrote:
| _> Compare this to our OR neighbors, where there are signs
| saying "your tax dollars at work" by ORDOT everywhere._
|
| I see these signs all over Southern California (I remember
| seeing them around the Bay Area especially post 08 GFC):
| https://static.wixstatic.com/media/e074b5_617daf538f0c4e0e89...
|
| They've been around since at least the late 90s/early 2000s.
| There's a whole official site for it too:
| https://rebuildingca.ca.gov/
| dwelch91 wrote:
| Doesn't "often under construction" mean that they are "at
| work"?
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I often breathe a sigh of relief when I pass over the boarder
| into Nevada and my car starts shaking.
|
| Roughly 70% the tax revenue per capita ($3.8k vs 2.6), but
| somehow they manage to maintain their roads.
| ink_13 wrote:
| On the contrary, I believe they are. There are thousands of
| miles of back roads in California built and maintained by
| Caltrans that are in absolutely incredible condition. Drive up
| and down any random mountain/hill/pass off a main freeway and
| enjoy a road the envy of almost anywhere else: well-built,
| smooth, with painted lines and signage.
|
| 880 and 101 suffer because their high traffic volumes cause
| much higher wear and tear while also making it difficult to
| make repairs.
| boogieknite wrote:
| Anecdote: Worked road construction summer 2010 as the guy who
| put those little sticky tabs on the road to mark where lines
| are repainted after construction is complete.
|
| Sometimes I'd finish early and get odd jobs. Between Roseburg
| and the Oregon coast a colleague and I were assigned to stand
| one of those "your tax dollars at work" signs on a steep slope.
| Took 2 hours at prevailing wage OT and for total labor cost of
| $480 between the two of us. By far the steepest labor rate I'd
| ever been able to charge. Thanks for the money, irony!
| Lammy wrote:
| > The SFBay I-880 and US-101 are always packed
|
| A lot of this is due to the freeway system being unfinished.
|
| 101 would have been supplemented by the Bayfront Freeway (CA
| 87): https://cahighways.org/ROUTE087.html#_ROUTING_SEG2
|
| And 880 by routes 61, 238, 185, 13, and 77:
|
| - https://cahighways.org/ROUTE061.html#_HIST1964
|
| - https://cahighways.org/ROUTE238.html
|
| - https://cahighways.org/ROUTE185.html
|
| - https://cahighways.org/ROUTE013.html
|
| - https://cahighways.org/ROUTE077.html
| wbl wrote:
| Would have just meant more commuters
| Lammy wrote:
| Only because those people can't find somewhere to live
| that's near work. So sick of this _incredibly_ stupid line
| of thinking from otherwise very smart people who refuse to
| realize that increased demand on transportation
| infrastructure is the flip-side of the housing shortage.
| wbl wrote:
| I don't disagree but induced demand absolutely exists as
| people would move accordingly.
| Lammy wrote:
| Agreed, but I would say that inducing demand is the point
| of building anything. Nobody uses that term when it comes
| to building homes people want to live in. They only ever
| use it to oppose people being able to exercise their
| freedom of movement.
| codexb wrote:
| It's heavily county based. Drive on the 5 through LA county and
| the second it crosses into Orange County, it magically gets
| incredibly better.
| bloomingeek wrote:
| The arm-pit state of Oklahoma, where I live, is considering a
| "mile tax" to support the maintenance of our road system. Of
| course we know it's also to offset EV vehicles gas tax loss.
| (which EV owners already have) Our roads are terrible and don't
| usually get repaired until they're almost dangerous.
|
| This tax will hurt fixed income and poorer people the most. As
| Thomas Jefferson said: "The government you elect is the
| government you deserve." My state is so red, it's scarlet.
| qup wrote:
| I can't figure out if you want the roads fixed or you don't
| want the tax.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| People being too poor is a separate issue from bad tax systems
| incentivizing unsustainable behavior.
|
| Tax liabilities that are a function of consumption are the
| right way to tax.
|
| If the tax burden is deemed too high for poor people, then give
| them cash.
|
| Two different problems, two different solutions, and it keeps
| the incentives aligned properly.
| seizethecheese wrote:
| "This is your brain on politics." (A reply to the grandparent
| comment.)
| olyjohn wrote:
| Every state has been getting lobbied to do this for at least
| the last 10 years. These bills come through the legislatures
| every year, and I think it will keep coming until finally one
| of them passes. There are manufacturers of the GPS trackers
| pushing for it, and companies who want to have the state-
| granted monopoly to manage the tracking and billing. They are
| frothing at the mouth to get this passed and make a ton of
| money billing every single person.
| 0xffff2 wrote:
| Why wouldn't you just use a yearly odometer inspection by the
| DMV? Even if the legislature wanted to enact such a tax, why
| involve GPS and third party companies?
| surfaceofthesun wrote:
| I think a miles traveled tax that accounts for vehicle weight
| would probably less regressive than the current gas tax.
|
| EVs save substantially in running costs. I'd imagine it would
| charge those using 3/4 and 1-ton pickups as family cars the
| most.
| brewdad wrote:
| Oregon has tried to implement a miles tax multiple times but
| failed to pass it. Instead they've opted for a surcharge on
| vehicle registrations for EVs and also on any vehicle that gets
| better than 20 mpg.
|
| Counterproductive from a climate change standpoint for a
| "green" state but it preserved the road money.
| cake_robot wrote:
| Internalizing the costs you create are good though. In a
| perfect world I would think weight x miles would be what you'd
| want to tax on. I say this as someone who owns an EV; I should
| have to account for the higher road deterioration my heavier
| vehicle causes. If someone's income is too low you fix that
| other ways than trying to subsidize their externalizing
| behaviors.
| cryptozeus wrote:
| Great analysis! In last decade I have seen road quality of
| California degrade like crazy. It used to have clean, open roads
| now the quality has gone down to trash. Hwy 101 feels like you
| are in New Jersey.
| rconti wrote:
| > Interestingly, in all cases urban roads are worse quality than
| rural roads, presumably because they see higher traffic than
| rural roads.
|
| There's more infrastructure under urban roads. Crews come in to
| fix some utility, shred a section of a lane, patch it poorly with
| dissimilar materials, and leave.
| bluGill wrote:
| Rural roads are often unpaved. The local authority has to come
| by regularly with a grade to redo things or they become
| unusable quickly. Overall this is by far the cheapest way to
| have a road, but it doesn't scale to high use and city folks
| demand something that makes less dust. Rural roads also
| includes minimum maintance roads which demand 4wd (real 4wd,
| many SUVs will have trouble) when the weather is nice and a
| winch is a must when things get rainy or snowy.
|
| Though given his definition of quality I expect he is actually
| ignoring all the real rural roads and only talking about major
| roads which while they get less traffic than urban roads are
| maintained to similar standards.
| engineer_22 wrote:
| In my area the rural roads are typically asphalt. This part
| of the country receives a lot of precipitation and cold
| weather and our soils are pretty soft.
|
| They stay in good shape for years, with little maintenance.
| There aren't many patches because there aren't many
| utilities. Truck traffic tends to gravitate to the highways,
| and car and ag traffic are low impact.
| rwiggins wrote:
| Maybe area-dependent? I grew up in an extraordinarily rural
| area in Tennessee. Most roads were paved (asphalt). Even ones
| out in the middle of nowhere.
|
| The _conditions_ of some of the remote roads might not have
| been great, mind you... and some seemed "thinner" almost,
| maybe paved a long time ago?
| nemomarx wrote:
| I think it's a snow thing - asphalt seems to wear down
| really fast in rural PA, probably from freezing at nights
| and snow and ice, so you can't do paving as cheaply out in
| the mountains or so on. The county dumps gravel down once a
| year and let's passing traffic wear it smoother over time,
| but it sucks to drive on fresh.
| shkkmo wrote:
| Absolutely. The freeze thaw cycle is brutal on asphalt in
| many ways. Surface cracks expand, frost heaves distort
| and the material itself weakens. This is before any
| additional damage caused by plowing or ice scraping.
| wombatpm wrote:
| Freeze thaw and Temp range. MN may experience air temps
| from -20 to 100 over the course of a year. And you might
| experience 50 degree swings in a week (-20 to +30).
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| A lot of that is the road profile. Western NY has notably
| better county highways than PA because they tend to have
| wide shoulders that mitigate plow damage and frost
| heaving on the he edges.
| wnc3141 wrote:
| Of course there are political factors. I have always heard
| that in Wisconsin many rural roads were paved to better
| serve dairy farmers beginning in the 1890s - and continued
| through the WPA program. While in Minnesota, similar rural
| roads remained unpaved.
|
| Best link I could find to substantiate such a claim
|
| https://www.uwlax.edu/currents/biking-in-the-driftless-
| regio....
|
| Of course in contemporary times the high maintenance cost
| has many Wisconsin towns/counties considering returning to
| gravel.
|
| https://www.wpr.org/economy/taxes/small-wisconsin-towns-
| pave...
| ensignavenger wrote:
| Chip and Seal is a technique used in a lot of rural areas
| that comes in with less maintenance than gravel but not as
| expensive as asphalt. It is basically a a top thin layer of
| tar with gravel pressed into it.
| pkaye wrote:
| My city in SF bay area resurfaced some residential
| streets that way. So far it held on well for 10 years
| probably because we don't get much truck traffic.
| Meanwhile the near freeway is a major route for big
| trucks so after the winter rain its all full of potholes.
| jmspring wrote:
| Living in a rural northern CA county, the roads are paved,
| however many are failing. The funny this is, one county over
| has much better maintained roads (by the state) because they
| are in a different district.
| nozzlegear wrote:
| > Rural roads are often unpaved.
|
| Like the other replies have indicated, I'm not so sure this
| is the case? I live in very rural northwest Iowa, and while
| there are certainly plenty of gravel roads around here, I'm
| only driving on them if I'm intentionally trying to go "off
| the beaten path." You'll take a gravel road if you live on a
| farm, or you're trying to get to somewhere secluded such as a
| lake, campground or _maybe_ a county park; but (imo) it 's
| rare for the average person to drive down a gravel road just
| going from Point A to Point B on their daily commute.
| dboreham wrote:
| Montana here. Most of the dirt roads (county roads) have
| been paved in the 25 years I've been here however there are
| some left where you can drive 20 miles unpaved. Also
| recently in Iceland I found a few unpaved roads (or rather
| "the Google Lady" did. Sorry whichever rental company I
| used there..
| dullcrisp wrote:
| Do most people in rural areas not live on a farm? Excuse my
| ignorance but genuine question.
| ssl-3 wrote:
| The people of the United States are broadly free to build
| a home wherever they can afford to, comrade, including on
| land that would otherwise be used for farming.
|
| (Actual answer: I know a bunch of people who live in
| houses in the middle of seemingly-nowhere in rural Ohio,
| and almost none of them farm anything at all. They just
| seem to like the space and the quiet and the desolate
| isolation.
|
| The only _farmer_ who I know is my parents ' neighbor,
| who has a house few miles away from their place.)
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| Depends where you live. In my state you pretty much
| cannot build any kind of residence on land that is zoned
| for agriculture.
| bluGill wrote:
| Generally you are allowed on resident per 40 acres or
| something similar - farms are getting larger and that
| leaves plenty of land that doesn't have a house that
| could.
| bluGill wrote:
| That is a tricky question to answer. Farms need small
| towns scattered all over - that is where many of the
| teachers, accountants, mechanics, hired hands, other
| services, and owners of the stores that serve all of the
| above live. Often small towns have factories that are not
| farm related and those employees live someplace. Do you
| count those small towns as rural? Many of the above have
| also realized that they can buy some build a house on
| marginal farmland cheap and so live rural but they are
| working a small town job - they may have a few goats or
| something but it isn't how they earn their money - hard
| they farmers? There are also people who retire to the
| country, hunting cabins (not residents), camp grounds
| (the owner lives there), and other non-farmers living in
| rural areas. Parents generally transfer the farm to the
| kid who will inherit it over decades, and part of that is
| the parents move to a small house off the farm but still
| rural - are they living on a farm?
|
| Depending on how you count the above you can say that
| most people in rural areas are not living on farms. Even
| if you don't count small towns residents, there are a lot
| of people who are not farmers living out there.
| AngryData wrote:
| Certainly not. You will be lucky to find an area where 5%
| of the people living their are farmers or work on farms.
| bluGill wrote:
| I'm not sure we disagree. You use the gravel rural roads to
| get to the nearest paved road. So rarely are you going more
| than a few miles on gravel, then you hit a paved road which
| you travel for the many miles to where you are going. Most
| of the roads are still unpaved, but you spend most of your
| driving time on the paved roads.
| rwiggins wrote:
| Errr, not in the rural area I grew up in. Gravel
| driveways are _super_ common, gravel roads not so much.
|
| To give some specifics: I only remember driving down an
| actual gravel road (like, for public use) a single time.
| In 18 years. Even my friends who lived >30min from the
| nearest "city" (~10k population) had paved roads all the
| way.
|
| But that is just my own experience. Areas with a
| different climate or geography might be a totally
| different story. My hometown area is relatively flat,
| lots of farmland, and rarely gets severe winter weather.
| margalabargala wrote:
| At the very beginning he separates into:
|
| - freeways
|
| - local roads
|
| - unpaved roads
|
| Obviously the high-clearance-only roads in the mountain West
| will score poorly here, but when trying to compare US roads
| to Netherlands roads, those are not useful as the Netherlands
| has no equivalent.
| vel0city wrote:
| You're probably also going to have far fewer massive vehicles
| on those rural roads. More things like pickups yes, but
| probably considerably fewer semi-teicks and busses and fire
| trucks and cement mixers what not. Those big trucks passing
| through are going to stick to interstates far more often when
| going through rural areas.
| hparadiz wrote:
| On average yea but when a rural road is neglected it's far
| far worse than any urban road. I'm looking at you
| Pennsylvania.
| burnte wrote:
| Born and raised in Pgh, the highways are awful. Always have
| been.
| Loughla wrote:
| We have large farm machinery though.
| tcmart14 wrote:
| There is large machinery. But does it go down the same
| stretch of road 20 times a day all days of the year though?
| May also depend on location. You ain't taking the combine
| down the road several times a day in the middle of winter.
| So you do get the wear and tear of large farm equipment,
| but its still probably less than an urban road and not year
| round.
| olyjohn wrote:
| Also their slow speeds and larger tires probably lead to
| less wear than another vehicle of the same weight
| traveling at normal highway speeds.
| bluGill wrote:
| Farmers are using normal semis to move the crops from the
| field to elsewhere on the road. Farm equipment on the
| road is generally unloaded.
| vel0city wrote:
| Do those go down the road every 10-20 minutes like the poor
| bus service on the urban street outside my home does? And
| that is just the busses. Add 2-3 semi-trucks every five
| minutes.
|
| Oh, and there's still farm equipment every now and then. I
| am in Texas after all.
| jgeada wrote:
| Large machinery, but typically very low ground pressure.
| After all, that same machinery is designed to operate on
| arable soil without sinking or bogging down. It is my
| understanding that it is ground pressure more than absolute
| weight that correlates to road surface damage/erosion.
| amatecha wrote:
| yeah, the farm vehicles usually have gigantic tires too,
| compared to any regular passenger vehicle
| greenavocado wrote:
| Axle loading limits
| macksd wrote:
| I think other explanations replying are on point. I live in
| a town that's surrounded by a lot of farm traffic, and most
| of those roads are in good shape. But there are also routes
| used heavily by trucks servicing fracking sites, and those
| roads are TRASHED.
| oblio wrote:
| My grandma used to live close to a road servicing an oil
| derrick, back in 90's Romania (so 0 infrastructure
| investments for probably 10 years).
|
| At one point my family was in a Dacia 1310 (crappy and
| very cheap Romanian car) and we literally went very
| slowly (probably 10kmph) through a section where the road
| was basically sunk, there was a "pothole" probably 10-15m
| long and 80% of the road wide (both lanes), about 1m
| deep, I think.
|
| The funny thing is that there were potholes inside the
| uber-pothole :-)))
| FuriouslyAdrift wrote:
| City buses are what really shred urban roads (and winter
| plows)
|
| https://www.kgw.com/article/news/verify/yes-bus-more-road-
| da...
| vel0city wrote:
| Yeah looking at any road around me it's obvious which lanes
| the busses prefer.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| In the mid-90s, Seattle started excavating its bus-stops-
| on-a-slope and pouring a new concrete foundation, because
| the busses were warping the asphalt so badly.
|
| I was just back there this last weekend, and you can no
| longer see any of the concrete - it has all been coated
| with asphalt. However, I assume its a rather thin layer
| because none of the bus stops I checked show the signs of
| damage that were becoming common in 90-96.
| wombatpm wrote:
| They opened a new truck stop near me with asphalt roads.
| 6 months later they tore it up for concrete because the
| asphalt shifted into lumps where the trucks were turning
| cono
| teh_klev wrote:
| I did google "bus-stops-on-a-slope", but nothing jumped
| out. What are "bus-stops-on-a-slope"?
| ender341341 wrote:
| I think they meant that the bus stop is on a hill maybe?
| stonemetal12 wrote:
| Asphalt, like glass, is an amorphous solid. When a heavy
| truck sits still on asphalt, asphalt will flow out from
| under the tires. Not only do you get a depression and
| eventually a pot hole where the tire was, and you get a
| little hill next to it.
|
| You just about need an offroad vehicle to avoid hitting
| the street.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Moreover, when a heavy vehicle like a loaded passenger
| bus has to accelerate from stationary on a hill, it
| exerts incredible force on the asphalt below it.
| mlsu wrote:
| This is a reason why buses are not as cheap as they seem at
| first glance.
|
| Often times, buses are favored because they require low
| capex (adding lines is easy, politically palatable, etc).
|
| But in practice, on really busy bus lines with high
| throughput, it shreds the roads, to the point where you
| really need to re-pave the whole road every 10 years -- in
| which case, why not just put a rail line in and use a
| train!
| animal_spirits wrote:
| That is similar to the reason trackless trams are not
| economically viable. They are essentially just busses
| that are guided, but because of their precision the cause
| really bad erosion on the parts of the road where they
| drive. At least with busses there is variability on the
| parts of the road that are eroded and it affects the
| whole road more evenly
| entropicdrifter wrote:
| There are certain places/conditions where trackless does
| make more sense, however. Philadelphia still has several
| trolleybus lines active for instance, in addition to
| buses, trolleys, subway, el-train, and traditional rail.
|
| My guess is that it works here because our roads turn to
| shit anyhow from the freeze/thaw cycle, so it's not
| adding as much maintenance burden as it would elsewhere.
| AngryData wrote:
| In my rural area there are tons of gravel pits so the roads
| take a lot of abuse. However every gravel pit ive seen here
| open up on a new road has been forced to spend the money on
| upgrading that road to handle those gravel trucks.
| MisterTea wrote:
| My favorite are the leaky man hole and other infrastructure
| covers which allow rain to wash the road bed into the pit. Then
| a void forms and a pothole forms. Then the muni fills the hole
| only for it to reappear as more road bed is washed away. Then
| repeat ad nauseam. I sometimes imagine a snake of asphalt all
| the way to the sewer plant.
| burnte wrote:
| This happens CONSTANTLY in Atlanta. They'll spend a bunch of
| money fixing a road, then a month later Public Works digs a
| huge hole and leaves a steel plate on it for a year, then patch
| it with either concrete that is an inch or two below the rest
| of the surface, or they don't pack the earth they put back and
| in 3 months the patch has sunk into a new pothole in a brand
| new road. The city has been trying to force public works to go
| do those things BEFORE road projects, but it's an uphill
| battle.
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| This happens in other countries too. Some people theorize
| that it's done because of internal rivalries between
| dependencies/political factions, but I suspect local
| governments are just inept at logistics.
| jakjak123 wrote:
| Its also a difficult problem. They need the right digger
| and the right crew at the right time and possibly the right
| weather to get the job done. Many times there will be weeks
| of juggling around schedules and suddenly the digging
| started three weeks after the road was finished
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| Let me ask you: how many buildings collapsed during the
| reign of Hammurabi?
| Carrok wrote:
| I.. I have no idea. I don't even know who Hammurabi is.
|
| Is there a point you're trying to make? If so, care to
| enlighten us without assuming we all have history
| degrees?
| PittleyDunkin wrote:
| He's a rather famous chap:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hammurabi
|
| Regardless, I suspect there's a point being made about
| the timeless ineptitude of bureaucracy (even if I don't
| agree with it--some cultures are notably more competent
| at managing logistics of public works than other are).
| 6equj5 wrote:
| > 229 If a builder builds a house for someone, and does
| not construct it properly, and the house which he built
| falls and kills its owner, then that builder shall be put
| to death.
|
| http://faculty.collin.edu/mbailey/hammurabi%27s%20laws.ht
| m
| yulker wrote:
| Not obscure enough of a figure to necessitate a history
| degree. Well known for being one of the first to
| establish building codes.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| Hammurabi is an ancient ruler of Mesopotamia/Babylon who
| is famous for establishing a written code of laws, of
| which copies inscribed in steles have survived to this
| day). I don't know of it's the earliest example of a
| written legal code but certainly one of the earliest that
| we have a record of.
|
| Among these laws were civil penalties for builders who
| performed shoddy workmanship:
|
| > If a builder constructs a house for a man but does not
| make it conform to specifications so that a wall then
| buckles, that builder shall make that wall sound using
| his own silver.
|
| By the way, the Romans also had building codes, and
| engineers who built bridges and roads were liable for the
| durability of those structures, thus a tradition of over-
| engineering.
| fragmede wrote:
| one of my classmates really resented having to take GE
| classes outside his major in order to graduate but
| looking back on it, he said they really helped him out in
| ways he didn't expect.
| btreecat wrote:
| 1? 1000?
|
| Regardless the answer, the lack of context makes the
| figure meaningless.
| brnt wrote:
| Here, the gov gives time windows for utility owners to dig
| and do maintenance, after which it'll be repaved. If you
| want to do maintenance on your infra, you request a
| timeslot and the gov groups the maintenance (eg sewer and
| gas). You best not miss your window.
| MikeTheGreat wrote:
| Sure, but what happens if you have maintenance issues
| that arise after the window closes?
|
| Are we really going to tell people that they can't live
| without sewer / clean water / electricity / whatever
| because the window closed 2 months ago and their problem
| didn't start until today?
| scherlock wrote:
| It's a carrot, not a stick. It's designed to spread the
| digging.and repaving costs around so the work is cheaper.
| It's more that the city knows it's doing work in an area,
| digging up the road, so they tell all the utilities, hey
| if you are thinking of doing work on Main Ave, we'll be
| starting work on September 3rd, if tell us now and can
| get a crew out before September 21st, you won't need to
| pay to excavate and repave.
| tourmalinetaco wrote:
| We were getting our roads redone in my town and the county
| commissioner ordered an asphalt miller to run on _one
| singular road_ , when we needed it (and said for it to run)
| on all of them. It cost us the same to run it on one road
| or all of them, because most of the costs were transport of
| machinery. So I definitely lean towards ineptitude.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| Probably everywhere frankly, but Dallas is terrible, too. My
| wife and I took up skateboarding recently and it became much
| more obvious. Go out to the suburbs or a running trail or
| nice park and it's smooth sailing. You can push and coast.
| Where we live near downtown, it's cracks, rocks,
| discontinuities, metal plates. The gas company also dug up a
| bunch of bedrock 7 years ago, left a huge pile of it on the
| corner, rain came a few days later, and for the last 7 years,
| our sidewalks have been covered in dirt and the houses and
| cars all get a thin yellow film on them because there is so
| much dirt in the air all the time.
|
| That's before considering what regular construction crews do.
| Most of the sidewalks are closed most of the time. They're
| routinely torn out and never fixed. There are nails and other
| debris in the roads all the time. When we first moved to our
| current address, my wife had all four of her tires go flat
| within the first year. I didn't own a car until two years
| ago, but both front tires have gotten nails in them already.
| That's also on top of the city's contracted out private dump
| truck crushing my rear windshield and smashing the hatch and
| leaving a business card with a claim number on one of my
| front wiper blades. That was nice to walk out to.
|
| Then there was the crew across the street stealing all of my
| power tools when I accidentally left my garage open one day.
|
| I'm not a NIMBY, but experiencing this makes me weary of the
| Hacker News zeitgeist railing against communities that don't
| want their neighborhoods turned into constant construction.
| There are entirely non-evil reasons homeowners might want
| that because building where people already live is incredibly
| disruptive.
| HeatrayEnjoyer wrote:
| How did a pile of Rick seven years ago lead to continuous
| dust even today?
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| Part of it is funding. Highways are for the most part federally
| funded, and the feds can print money at will. Urban roads have
| to be repaired from the city budget, and user fees (fuel taxes)
| are nowhere near enough to keep them maintained properly.
| leetcrew wrote:
| I thought the feds pay a large portion of construction but
| the states pay most of the maintenance. some states clearly
| do a worse job of highway maintenance than others. it's like
| night and day crossing the MD/PA border on I-95.
| whatever1 wrote:
| 2 huge pipelines with big enough diameter to fit smaller ones.
| One for utilities in (gas, electricity, cables, warm water).
| One for waste (sewage, trash etc)
| Spooky23 wrote:
| That's part of the reason. The other is that rural roads are
| mostly county or state funded (often through large Federal
| appropriations), and draw in a larger tax base and in-house
| professional engineering.
|
| That's why you can drive around rust belt areas of Upstate NY
| on nice roads - NYC Finance bonuses pay for that.
|
| City roads are usually maintained by the city, which has much
| more limited access to capital. Because of that, in-house work
| is usually limited to mill and pave work and there's not enough
| throughput for an appropriate staff of engineers. Big projects
| are usually task focus (safety, multi-modal) and are funded by
| Federal grants and use outside design and build contractors.
|
| For the shared utility work, there is some coordination. My
| wife worked for a municipal water utility and ran the metering
| and infrastructure division. They received notice of paving or
| other jobs and prioritized proactive maintenance to happen
| while the road was under construction. The city would fine
| entities for digging up the street for non-emergency purposes
| for 6-12 months after the project completed. It helps, but
| broken mains or transformers necessitate the street cut.
| salynchnew wrote:
| It's kind of maddening how often blogs like this will make
| motions towards developing an educated opinion (citing multiple
| reports, researching stats from public datassets, etc.) but
| don't seem to have bothered to actually talk to any of the
| people who are invovled in the practice they describe in their
| post (in this case, building roads).
| rsynnott wrote:
| > but this is based on a survey of the perceptions of business
| leaders about road quality, not actual road data
|
| Like... business leaders specifically in the freight and
| transport industry, or just _in general_? The first seems like it
| might be _marginally_ useful; the second is just nonsensical.
| Jimmc414 wrote:
| Greatly depends on the state. Louisiana interstates still haven't
| recovered from the fallout from the National Minimum Drinking Age
| Act, passed in 1984, which raised the legal drinking age to 21 as
| a condition of receiving annual federal highway funds. Louisiana
| was the last state in the U.S. to have a legal drinking age of
| 18. Louisiana experienced about 9 years of reduced highway funds
| as a result.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Also the only state I've seen with _drive through daquiri
| service_ !
| Jimmc414 wrote:
| It gets worse! They tape the lids to the cup and as long as
| you don't put the straw in the cup it's not an open
| container.
|
| Also, the state legislature ruled that roosters were not
| animals to circumvent cock fighting laws.
|
| There's a web of similar Napoleonic Code caused loopholes in
| Louisiana law
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Coconuts are exempt from injury liability
| Jimmc414 wrote:
| wasn't familiar but wow.
|
| "Twenty-three years ago, Louisiana added coconuts to the
| list of official Mardi Gras throws protected from
| personal injury lawsuits, ordering that the public
| assumes the risk of being struck "by any missile"
| traditionally thrown, tossed, or hurled by krewe
| members."
| asdasdsddd wrote:
| Love that I live in California pay out my ass in property AND
| state tax and get the worst roads in America despite the fact
| that we barely deal with ice, snow, or rain.
| maxwellg wrote:
| You personally may pay lots of property taxes but California's
| Prop 13 means that people who have been here for a long time
| and kept property within the family are paying significantly
| less. Our average tax rate is 35th in the nation -
| https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/state/high-state-
| property.... I grew up in New Jersey originally so I have an
| admittedly warped view of property taxes, though.
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| I'm not sure what the solution is but there is a gross
| misallocation of housing in California... the suburban family
| homes with 4 bedrooms and massive yards designed for kids to
| play outside are almost exclusively occupied by retired
| childless people that only use the rooms when the grandkids
| visit, and tiny apartments are packed with families that are
| paying 4x+ for housing what the retired people in large homes
| are paying.
|
| Prop. 19 was supposed to fix this but clearly did not- I rent
| in a suburb and have a young kid, but there are almost no
| other people under 65 or so within a large radius of my home.
| asdasdsddd wrote:
| Yes prop 13 is truly disgusting
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| Keeping roads perfect requires taking them out of commission
| for repair... which is a disaster on California freeways that
| have constant traffic. I think CA does a fair job of balancing
| that with road condition, and I assume they are already using
| more durable and expensive road construction methods than other
| areas that lacks so much constant heavy traffic.
| brewdad wrote:
| I wonder if California would be better off with more
| Carmageddon type projects like when they shut down the 405
| for like a week and hammered out necessary work.
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| If you shut down one freeway in the LA or SF area, every
| other one grinds to a halt also- including essentially all
| non-dead-end local roads... you might as well shut them all
| down at once, but there aren't enough road crews to repave
| them all in a week.
|
| Above a certain population density there isn't really any
| way to use cars that isn't awful. When I was in Socal I
| would often meet people 10-20 miles away, e.g. for an after
| work bar trip and ride my bicycle - and beat all of the car
| drivers by a long wait.
| vzaliva wrote:
| Does this statistics include private roads? Or it is only roads
| accessible to public?
| blibble wrote:
| as a brit I've driven through most of the US states and major
| cities, and they were generally comparable to what I was used to
| at home and throughout continental europe
|
| Los Angeles though was something else, giant gouges on 12 lane
| highways every few feet for miles on end
|
| and on sliproads, sudden surprise vertical walls with right
| angled bends
|
| was like something out of the third world
| vishrajiv wrote:
| Do you remember which highway you were driving? Interestingly
| this goes against my experience. I've actually remarked to many
| friends that I enjoy night-time driving in Los Angeles since
| the highways are well-lit and smooth (and of course, no traffic
| at night).
| blibble wrote:
| I-5
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| > Los Angeles though was something else, giant gouges on 12
| lane highways every few feet for miles on end
|
| Probably concrete fastening projects.
|
| > sliproads
|
| on/off ramps for AmE speakers.
| kristjansson wrote:
| Los Angeles is the v0.0.1 of freeways. Lessons were learned.
| koyote wrote:
| As someone who has driven in many different developed countries
| in the world (and been a passenger in many developing
| countries), California highways often feel like those in
| developing countries but it's combined with a much higher
| travelling speed.
|
| I think the only other country where I regularly got jolted up
| (nearly hitting my head on the ceiling of the car) was India.
| chainwax wrote:
| I'm from South Carolina, pretty close to the border with North
| Carolina. All my life i've heard that South Carolina's roads are
| terrible, especially compared to North Carolina's _amazing_
| roads.
|
| Looking at this data though, it seems while NC edges out SC by a
| small margin on interstate roads, SC actually beats NC on local
| roads.
|
| Take that, North Carolina!
| xenospn wrote:
| I'm currently in Albania, a country famous for shit roads.
| Surprisingly (or unsurprisingly, really), their roads are better
| than LA roads.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| There is more than one kind of quality.
|
| When I drove from New Mexico from New Hampshire I thought roads
| in the US South were remarkably good. I settled in New York where
| major roads seemed pretty good but go to Pennsylvania and it
| seems there are two kinds of roads: bad roads and roads under
| construction, you never seem to find a good road that was just
| constructed. A lot of people thought it was frost heaves but this
| article say it isn't.
|
| My quality problem in NY is that atlas maps and GPS maps show
| numerous roads that aren't really passable or if they are
| passable are too risky. I never saw 'minimum maintenance' or
| 'abandoned' roads before I came to NY and I wish they were so
| marked in GPS maps. There is a road near me which is sometimes
| passable in the winter if you have the right kind of vehicle and
| if you know the road goes downhill and won't require that much
| traction... People who don't have the right kind of vehicle will
| get led by GPS down this road and think it is OK because there
| are tracks but halfway through they panic and try to turn around
| now they are in trouble. That road is passable in the summer
| except for when it gets washed out.
|
| Also NH is in a class by itself with its motor-oriented
| infrastructure (in 1980 they rerouted route 93 to go around
| Manchester and nobody goes there anymore) which is tree-
| structured as much as possible so you have many levels of
| hierarchy which can and will jam up. Want to walk? You can't get
| there from here. I can go for years in NY without updating my GPS
| maps but if I drive to NH I will see the road I am got rerouted
| and there is a shopping center where there used to be a road. And
| this is in a state that doesn't have income taxes so I don't know
| how they pay for it.
| quercusa wrote:
| I'm convinced that the states neighboring Pennsylvania take
| extra care of the last mile of roads on their side leading into
| PA so the transition is especially obvious.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| It sure looks that way on the Maryland side.
| alkonaut wrote:
| The more important quality metric than "roughness" is
| infrastructure/safety.
|
| A multi lane road shouldn't cross another one in a flat traffic
| light intersection. That risks T-collisions if someone runs a red
| light.
|
| It's pretty cheap to keep roads smooth if you skimp on making
| separated lanes, safe multilevel junctions and roundabouts in
| every intersection.
| lemax wrote:
| I once drove across the US-Canadian border during a snowstorm. On
| the Canadian side, the road was a slew of white slush that had us
| hydroplaning on and off. But as soon as we crossed back into the
| States, it was like a switch flipped. The road went from a slushy
| bog to a pristine surface with zero snow accumulation, just a
| slight gleam of moisture.
| rikthevik wrote:
| I'm not sure if you ended up in Saskatchewan, but it kind of
| sounds like you did. The highways in Alberta are quite a bit
| better and it's a relatively abrupt change.
| TMWNN wrote:
| I've heard that the quality of the Alaska Highway becomes
| noticeably better after entering the US from Canada.
| scoofy wrote:
| >rough roads inflict costs in the form of reduced vehicle speeds.
|
| I mean, this seems like a benefit in disguise in many urban
| areas. The idea that we _want_ high speeds is a real premise that
| needs to be defended.
| alexischr wrote:
| There is great variation between states. A good example is
| driving from Phoenix to San Diego via Yuma - the Arizona side is
| much better maintained, and the rougher California roads continue
| all the way to the city.
|
| (At least as of roughly four years ago)
| dmd wrote:
| Massachusetts in nearly last place, right where I expected it to
| be but always assumed that was just "everyone thinks their own is
| the worst".
| nickjj wrote:
| It's interesting New Hampshire leads the way for interstate
| highways and it is a 0% income tax state.
|
| I live in NY but I went to New Hampshire last month for the first
| time. I have to say the roads were really good, even in more
| remote areas in the White Mountain region. Heck even the dirt
| road I had to go on for 1.5 miles was in good shape for a Hyundai
| Elantra rental car.
|
| On the flip side, the roads near me are really bad in some spots.
| It's torn up pavement with massive pot holes for years in a
| decently trafficked area literally 1 minute away from a major
| highway.
| kaliqt wrote:
| It's simple: politics over people.
|
| NY's orgs (government or otherwise) steal all the tax money
| while pretending to be for the people, NH conversely does not.
| justin66 wrote:
| > It's interesting New Hampshire leads the way for interstate
| highways and it is a 0% state tax area.
|
| You're talking about the state income tax? It'd be unusual for
| any state to use much of that money for roads. There are a lot
| of other tax revenue sources dedicated specifically to that
| purpose.
| nickjj wrote:
| > You're talking about the state income tax?
|
| Yep thanks, I updated my post to reflect that.
|
| You oftentimes hear road quality being thrown around in
| relation to what you pay in income tax or taxes in general.
| That is all hearsay though.
| Agingcoder wrote:
| Interesting. I traveled 15 years ago around california, over 4000
| miles in three weeks. I remember being shocked at the state of
| the roads - some of them were downright dangerous, the car
| wouldn't stay on the road, and I felt I was more or less
| constantly vibrating. Based on the article I must have driven on
| non interstate roads which are in california in particular really
| bad .
| rightbyte wrote:
| "Overall, the quality of US interstates is very high, while the
| quality of roads in major cities is quite poor."
|
| Is this really true? Coming from a country with alot of ice,
| American cities I've worked in seemed to have prestine roads.
| Terretta wrote:
| The article, and as of this comment, this thread, don't seem to
| contain particularly deep (ahem) comparisons of road
| construction, such as this article from Nature about bridge layer
| differences between US, Germany, England, and France:
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-12987-8
|
| For roadbeds, here's Canada versus various EU countries,
| unfortunately US isn't included:
|
| https://international.fhwa.dot.gov/pubs/pl07027/llcp_07_03.c...
|
| This piece starts with 4 different paving approaches, relatively
| distinct, yet each having ~40 year lifespans (US old and new,
| France, Germany):
|
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S209575642...
|
| The discussion goes into what might we mean by "how good"?
|
| PS. US road builders better hope the measure is never total
| quality divided by time-to-construct. They'd have some real
| ground to cover (ahem):
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aw3K_obepyo&t=1s
| burnt-resistor wrote:
| Shitty in Silicon Valley and most of Texas, places that don't
| even receive snow.
| donaldihunter wrote:
| Not surprised to see California and Californian cities near the
| bottom of all the lists.
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